From my past post about how web hosting directories suck, happy to say our own Blog Flux Web Hosting Directory went live roughly 15 hours ago. Still tweaking some aspects, but its live and ready for some reviews. Not that we have all the hosts we want to have there, but we are working on it.

If one were to believe geeky sites like Digg, Microsoft, the venerable tech-giant, and eBay, the poster-boy of making money on the internet are on their last legs. Any day now, they are going to be kicked over, to be acquired by fill in the blank here.

The latest one is about how eBay is a total joke. Does eBay’s customer service suck? I’m sure it does, like 99% of the behemoth corporations out there. Has anyone tried the customer service of a cellphone company? Now that is pain.

Yet many of these geeks, so insistent that they are right and that their views are shared by everyone continually sound the alarm. After all, they don’t like Microsoft (and eBay), and thus they must be dying companies.

Just like the previous bubble-crash forced everyone to actually look at dollars and sense, its time we focus back on what is working (and what isn’t). The world is more than just search engine revenue. Case in point: Microsoft’s profit for the latest quarter was 2.63 billion dollars. Last time I checked, a company with a profit over 10 billion dollars a year was in no imminent threat. Could they make a lot more money by hitting up Google? Damn straight. But if I was a dying company at 10 billion profit a year - well, it is a sacrifice I am willing to take

I of course say the above knowing that there are organizational problems and what not that they have to contend with. But with Vista and Office 2007 coming out, all I see in the near future is Microsoft printing more (and more) money.

eBay itself is of course ’struggling’ with hefty profits itself. Not Microsoft (or even Google-level) but still … 1 billion in profit a year.

Ford is a company in its death throes. Microsoft or eBay? Don’t think so.

Who Links To Me is a fairly popular tool - Yahoo reports almost one million backlinks. A simple site, it simply reports quickly on your backlinks and PageRank.

But whats this! The PageRank image is directly from Blog Flux PageRank Checker. There is a little link on the bottom (almost impossible to see), and even better, they nofollowed the link!

In between all the damn SEO spam on the site (I counted 47 obvious SEO text-links) they have to nofollow our link.

Steal our bandwidth, nofollow our link, and throw us in the muddy water with a crapload of bad neighbourhood links.

And don’t even ask permission.

Good to know Mr. Shanti is a class-act.

In the end I just defaulted everyone to PR2 - it may continue to eat up our bandwidth, but it is far more satisfactory

The title I chose pretty much sums up what Original Signal does.

On the face of it, it is one very purty website. No ads, the site displays headlines from the most influential blogs in each category, and even has a nice popup that only shows a a teaser of the content (even with a full feed). Their only source of monetization seems to be their search box on the top - using a Yahoo feed, the top links are sponsored. Some people may have problems with that (after all none of the content is ‘theirs’) but I do not really have a problem with that.

No siree - my problem is with their links.

The first link I saw was to TechCrunch, and as his habit of mine, I looked at the url. Instead of a simple direct link or even tracking link, its a full blow url: http://web20.originalsignal.com/article/4845/stalk-your-contact-list-with-upscoop.html

Why do they need such a URL? Hrmm I thought - maybe to prettify it. So I checked for a robots.txt file - nada. Nothing, zilch. This was odd - a full blown internal link, and no notification to robots that they should not be spidering the page.

Only one reasonable explanation, and one easy check: see how many pages Google has indexed for the site.

And there we have our beautiful back-stab. You find URLs like http://buzz.originalsignal.com/article/431824/acer-computer-pdoduct.html and http://movies.originalsignal.com/article/14405/carmen-loves-praying.html (among many others). Google clocks the site in with over 3,000 pages. I do not follow SEO news much now, but a while back there was a huge-stink about 302 Redirects. Basically sites were doing 302 redirects for outbound links (which to an end user got them to their destination) but confused search engines. When a site with a lot of trust/pagerank (ie Original Signal) did this, search engines would often times rank the offending site (ie Original Signal) and obliterate the original site with a dupe penalty.

And this is exactly what Original Signal is doing. They could link directly to the source (like popurls). If they really wanted to track clicks, all they would have had to do was link to something like out.php?id=xxx or /out/xxx. They could then block it from robots (so that spiders wouldn’t get confused) or use a proper 301 redirect. Nope - they instead chose to build a full url scheme. Users get absolutely nothing out it. Search engine spiders the pages.

Congratulations on helping pollute the web.

“How do I get more traffic to my site?”

This has to be one of the most commonly asked questions on forums like SitePoint and WebmasterWorld

Invariably, the answer is always the same:

Write great content and people will link to you.

What a bunch of poppycock.

There is a lot of great content out there. People who spend hours writing one single article, re-writing it multiple times so that it is flows nicely, conveys its points across, and doesn’t bore the user. But that is far from enough. You write this great content - how does it get found? It isn’t that Google sends out some magical gnome to check on your content. No, you have to put your head down and promote your site non-stop.

As I mentioned in my earlier post about web hosting directories, the amount of riff-raff at the top is astounding. There are legitimate directories out there, but none rank at the top. In fact, the ones ranking at the top are the most void of content. What they did they did beautifully - they promoted and promoted and promoted. It is almost like fighting in the trenches - very grinding, very boring, but very important.

Now I do want to step back and say that unique content is important. High quality content is important. But without promoting it, you fantastic unique content will go no where. Unique content with no promotion vs so-so content with promotion results in the so-so content beating down the unique content.

Lets take the example of this blog. It currently has 33 subscribers. I can say half of them came from ProBlogger.net (Darren Rowse). Jacob took the time to email him about blog resources in demand. While the content was useful (or so I like to believe), without having emailed him, Darren would have had no clue that such a post existed.

Yet there is a silver lining. Once your blog (or site) is popular enough, then unique content is fantastic. Just look at Life Hacker or TechCrunch. Those guys have taken the time to write great content and promote it. They are now in a position where tens of thousands of people read what they say every day. So when they do post useful unique content, it gets disseminated, fast. It appears on Digg. It appears on Del.icio.us. Links to their post spread like wildfire, and everyone sees it within a few days.

But those are the anomalies. They have worked hard to get where they are. For everyone else - you have to promote your content. Every time you post something useful, find 15-50 sites that would find your content interesting. My biggest site gets over 100,000 unique visitors a day. During its 6 year history, I have sent out at least 15,000 emails. No spam, nothing automated - every single one individually written. It was exhausting, but it paid off handsomely. The emails got the webmasters to my site, and the unique content compelled them to link to my site.

Quite a lot of people have talked about how Wikipedia will become a search engine sponge with its use of nofollow for all external links. Best of those articles was one by Nicholas Carr, in which he talked about and linked to various blog posts about how, with all the inbound links Wikipedia has, it’s poweress in search engine rankings would only grow.

I do have to agree with them. I can understand and even relate to Wikipedia’s problem (on a smaller scale). Blog Top Sites gets roughly 200 submissions a day, and with the amount of spam coming in, we eventually had to take the route of only allowing in sites we had approved. It is a very real problem, and it is a nasty headache.

Yet what Wikipedia has done is admit defeat. It is admitted that its own editors cannot keep up with the deluge of spam. It has become a monolithic structure (one that essentially refuses to acknowledge others). I would go so far to say that it was irresponsible of them - based on their entire community ethos, they have to recognize the importance that Wikipedia plays in search engines. Sticking your head in the sand and pretending that search engines are not affected by Wikipedia is delusional.

It will be interesting to look at the above graph after six months.

Of course, bashing something isn’t fair unless you propose an alternative path. Just like they force logged in users to edit semi-protected pages, why not only force logged in users to add links? At least try it out - what do they have to lose?

Beyond what Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask (I’m including CitySearch) offer, there are a lot of other local search/review websites. To name the notable:

• InsiderPages Funded by IdeaLab, an incubation company whose previous successes include Overture
• Zipingo (owned by Inuit, makers of Quicken)
• Judy’s Book - VC funded, I am including them here because a large majority of their traffic/base is still based on adding reviews for local establishments
• Yelp - VC funded, part of the ‘PayPal alumni creations’
• TrueLocal - owned by GeoSign, a well established internet company
• Local.com - publicly traded company

So we have six websites, all duking it out with the four big boys of the internet. And as almost always happens in a fragmented market, problems are starting to rear.

InsiderPages just went through some big layoffs. Zipingo really hasn’t made much of a splash, and with Google’s recent partnership with Inuit, may just be pushed aside. Judy’s Book was forced to change its plan to survive (but still has great value in its existing review-base). Yelp is the golden boy, chugging along, but has raised over $15 million. TrueLocal admittedly a different breed - it is actually sells its data. And local.com - well they seem to have already started the acquisition game, picking up soUno to build up its revenue stream.

The fact that none of them are profitable (except for TrueLocal) will lead to some casualties in the upcoming year. My prediction is that by the end of the year, only Yelp, TrueLocal, and Local.com will still exist. My prediction for the other three:

• InsiderPages - the management at IdeaLabs cannot be happy. They are used to getting press - a lot of it. Yelp has stolen any thunder the site has, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Yelp comes in and acquires the site. It does have over $10 million laying around …
• Zipingo - eliminated. As Google and Inuit’s partnership bears fruit, and Zipingo’s lackluster traction is considered, it will be axed.
• Judy’s Book - won’t survive. All their goodwill, all their traffic, and all their SEO benefits have been from local reviews. Alexa already shows a steady decline in pageviews, and so people just are not sticking around. As the value of their reviews diminishes, I see the site drying up. Sorry Andy, I just don’t see it happening

Others are launching - ie Mojo Pages. I don’t see them surviving long either - their blog focuses a lot on accounting and usability, but absolutely none on actually reaching mass market (which is the problem IP and Yelp really suffered from). I predict a quick demise for them also.

Second Life this, Second Life that.

I ran across the funny little parody Get a First Life when it was mentioned on TechCrunch.

Parodies are a great way to get a point across, provided people understand that it is a parody (when I see people taking Colbert seriously as a right-wing ‘pundit’, I shake my head). And if there is anything that needs to be gotten across, it is this: Second Life is over-rated

For those that have read my about page, you will know that I was once very intimately acquainted with MMOs and their large virtual worlds. Second Life was then, and still is, cumbersome, confusing, and crap. There, I said it.

Back in 2004 I met the Linden Labs fellows. I was hanging around with the IGE folk, and they were very close to having a deal signed. In fact, they did have a verbal agreement. They would provide the backend/market, and Linden Labs would sanction them as the ‘official’ company to go to. It would be win-win - Linden would get much needed income flow (the ‘world’ was floundering), and IGE would get its first official backing.

I left IGE soon after that (I was always marked as an independent contractor), and the deal never went through. From what my sources told me, Linden Labs had inflated the numbers, and having gotten greedy, had pushed out IGE in favor of setting up their own system.

So there are two things I want to raise issue with:

1. Second Life is over-rated And not over-rated like some sports player. Over-rated like the Origami Project (which I admit may still become useful). The numbers and metrics thrown around make no sense, and I don’t understand why people do not point that out. From BusinessWeek comes the number that a total of 1.5 million people have logged into SL once. Of that, only 17% still logged in after 30 days. But anyone that has worked with MMOs know that 30 days is no big deal. The real staying power is 90+ days. At that point, the player has done a significant investment into the world he/she is playing in. With the way Second Life is setup, how many of the users are actually contributing to Linden Lab’s bottom line?
2. The amount of money made in Second Life is a pittance. There was all this hype and news about how Anshe Chung becomes the first virtual world millionaire. Bullshit. The story (really a press release) made as much sense as Kevin Rose making 60 million dollars. Two things yelled ugh about this press release:
   1. Using some fuzzy math, Anshe claimed to be worth a million dollars. She doesn’t have a million dollars (far from it). But golly gosh darn it, she is worth that much. Nevermind having to find someone that actually pays that amount …
   2. What about Yantis, Brock, et all (of IGE fame). Back when I left them over two years ago, they were pulling $200,000 a day in revenue. Profit margins (never officially confirmed to me) were in the neighbourhood of 25%. That would mean roughly $50,000 a day in profit. That equates to $18.3 million in profit a year! Steve Slayer, the president of IGE, estimated the worldwide secondary market to be worth $800,000,000 over two years ago. So, I’m sorry, but Anshe’s story (already built on fuzzy math) is nothing impressive. IGE and the rest (even smaller companies like Lewt and Mogs) make more than a million dollars a year.

I will end with one final comparison. A 2006 year in review post by Terra Nova stated that Second Life’s peak concurrency was 20,000. I remember EverQuest 1 hit a concurrency of 100,000 when it had 500,000 paying subscribers. Second Life just does not warrant all the attention it gets.

Elena, the super-talented lead-designer at Design Disease (now a part of our BloggyNetwork) is currently updating the site to be a bit more … beautiful. Its like me, webdesignified.

And no, this isn’t my post for the day

If there is any niche that has abused (and raped and pillaged) the definition of a ‘website directory’, the honor definitely belongs to web hosting directories.

I just did a search for web hosting directory on Google. Lets look at the top 10 sites:

1. Shill. Using the guise of ‘award winners’ they list every advertiser they could possibly cram into the site.
2. Shill. From ‘top 10 web hosts’ to ‘hosts they recommend’, just a big big list of advertisers.
3. Shill. ‘Showcase’ - what about an actual directory?
4. Shill. What a surprise - TopHosts.com is the grand-daddy of shill hosting directories. On the frontpage alone I saw 16 image ads and 20 text link ads (both direct and redirects).
5. Mostly Shill. Their search does seem to bring up honest results, but everything else is shill/sponsored.
6. Shill. Their top 10 hosts are really ‘top 10 who will pay me the most’
7. Legitimate. Or sort of. They do push HostGator down your throat without mentioning its an advertisement, but its far better than the rest. The name is also very miss-leading (free?)
8. Semi-legitimate. I actually created this site a long long time ago. It was sold a long time ago (opportunity cost folks), and it looks like it has not been updated in ages. They have splashed AdSense all over the site (which didn’t exist when I made this site), and also list sites with an affiliate program first.
9. Shill. Ads and ads and more ads.
10. Broken. I couldn’t get any search form to work.

There is so many crappy websites out there claiming to be a web hosting directory it makes me gag. My above list only factors in ’sponsors’ - when you start adding the fake ‘reviews’ thrown in there that do nothing more than shill for the top paying hosting companies - gag x 2.

So whats a person like me to do? Write his own web hosting directory. More on that soon

UPDATE January 29: It is now live.